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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 18th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
Friday, March 19, 2010
Honda looks to give hybrids a lithium-ion charge
Bloomberg
Honda Motor Co., the nation’s second-largest carmaker, plans to introduce lithium-ion battery-powered hybrid cars as it struggles to narrow Toyota Motor Corp.’s lead in sales of gasoline-electric cars.
Honda plans to use lithium-ion batteries in its Civic compact “within the next two to three years,” as well as in its Acura luxury cars and other models, Executive Vice President Koichi Kondo said earlier this week.
Honda has failed to match Toyota’s success with hybrids, led by the top-selling Prius. Lithium-ion batteries can store as much as twice the energy of the nickel-metal hydride batteries that currently power the Prius and Honda’s Civic, Insight and CR-Z hybrid models, said Takeshi Miyao, a supply-chain analyst for auto consultant Carnorama in Tokyo.
“Lithium will become a lot more prevalent,” Kondo said at the company’s headquarters in Tokyo. The lithium-ion batteries will be produced with Honda’s joint-venture partner, Kyoto-based GS Yuasa Corp., starting in the second half of this year, he said. The venture is 49 percent owned by Honda.
Honda’s Insight fell short of the company’s global sales target of 200,000 units in the first year after its February 2009 debut. Deliveries totaled 143,015 as of last month.
Toyota’s third-generation Prius replaced the Insight as the best-selling car in Japan after its release last year. Toyota sold 27,008 Priuses in February, compared with Honda’s 3,517 Insight deliveries.
In the U.S., Toyota sold 7,968 Prius cars last month, compared with Honda’s 2,014 Insights. The hybrid version of the Civic sold 346 units. The larger Prius is more fuel-efficient than Honda’s hybrids, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data.
Honda Chief Executive Officer Takanobu Ito said in July the carmaker is developing a new hybrid system to be installed in midsize and large vehicles. The company will also add a hybrid version of its Fit subcompact later this year, using nickel-metal batteries.
While similarly sized lithium-ion batteries may cost 30 percent more than nickel-metal hydride cells, carmakers may be able to find savings by using smaller packs because of their higher energy density, Miyao said.
Lithium-ion costs will also decline as technical advances are made and production increases, according to research company Fuji Keizai Group.
Nissan Motor Co. will roll out its first battery-powered car, the Leaf, this year in Japan, the U.S. and Europe. Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn predicts electric vehicles will account for 10 percent of global car sales by 2020.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 18th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/b…
An Australian blog teaches us how elections are won at the UN.
We excerpt here parts of that article that deal with Mew York rather then Australia.
According to reports in 1996 one of the reasons for Australia’s failure to secure enough votes at that time in its bid {for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council} was that Australia was perceived as too close to the United States.
That charge appears to have currency within the Rudd Government for it has changed Australia’s voting patterns at the United Nations since announcing its bid, most noticeably with regard to support for Israel.
There is a deep suspicion that Mr Rudd has been seeking to win the support of Arab nations, leading to suggestions from the Arab League and the Syrian Ambassador that Australia should further distance itself from Israel if it hoped to win their support for the UNSC bid.
There is also concern about the actual cost of the bid, which is officially budgeted at $11.2 million.
This is merely the tip of a potential iceberg.
Considerable time and effort is being devoted to the campaign from within our diplomatic resources.
The Governor-General last year undertook a tour of nine African nations, estimated to cost more than $700,000, which involved actively lobbying for votes.
The Rudd Government has also massively increased the aid budget in the year prior to the vote and there are growing concerns that it will be used to buy votes, particularly in Africa and Latin America, where there are large numbers of UN votes.
Jenny Hayward-Jones of the Lowy Institute criticised this widespread use of aid as a poor use of taxpayers’ money and noted that “the interest in Africa and Latin America of late is really motivated by Australia’s desire to be elected to the UN Security Council.”
I acknowledge that there is great need for aid in these regions, but significant increases in Australian aid can have a bigger impact in our neighbourhood within the Asia Pacific region, where it is more closely aligned to our national interest.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 18th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-17-…
IT’S A DOME DEAL
If it does matter where CO2 is released, cities are in trouble.
There’s some fascinating new research about “CO2 domes,” invisible clouds of carbon pollution that hover above urban areas. Bradford Plumer at The New Republic does a great job setting the context:
Does it matter where carbon dioxide is emitted? From a climate perspective, at least, the standard answer has always been, “Not really.” Carbon dioxide mixes pretty evenly and uniformly throughout the atmosphere, so that the heat-trapping gases coming out of a factory in China have the same effect on global temperatures, pound for pound, as the greenhouse gases emitted by, say, cars in Delaware. (This is in contrast to a number of other air pollutants, whose effects are often localized—sulfur dioxide only causes acid rain in discrete areas.)
The new finding:
But a new study just published in Environmental Science and Technology by Stanford’s Mark Jacobson adds a slight twist to this standard view. Older research has found that local “domes” of high CO2 levels can often form over cities. What Jacobson found was that these domes can have a serious local impact: Among other things, they worsen the effects of localized air pollutants like ozone and particulates, which cause respiratory diseases and the like. As a result, Jacobson estimates that local CO2 emissions cause anywhere from 300 to 1,000 premature deaths in the United States each year. And presumably the problem’s much worse in developing countries.
Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford, has been vocal about the need for a complete clean-energy transformation. This week, with the political world consumed by health care, his work offers a reminder that carbon pollution is a serious health problem. It makes traditional air pollution—such as particulates and ozone—more harmful, so it poses particular threats to the places with the worst air pollution—cities.
Here’s a map of CO2 released from fossil fuels (with red and yellow marking the biggest pollution points), compiled from 2002 data by the Vulcan Project at Purdue University. It’s a map of emissions, which isn’t quite the same as airborne concentrations, but it gives a sense of where pollution happens:
Map courtesy of Purdue University Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Jacobson’s urban-dome research presents two implications worth teasing out:
Trouble for cap-and-trade? The new evidence adds a wrinkle to cap-and-trade plans by suggesting that it matters where pollution happens. Cap-and-trade rests on the assumption that a ton of carbon has the same impact regardless of where it’s emitted, so it doesn’t matter if a factory in Nashville and a power plant in Phoenix trade emission permits. It only matters where emissions can be reduced most cheaply.
But, says Jacobson, “This study contradicts that assumption.” Stanford’s press release on the research plays up the contradiction; “Urban CO2 domes increase deaths, poke hole in cap-and-trade proposal,” blares the headline.
If the research proves correct, it doesn’t argue against cap-and-trade so much as highlight the need for a multi-pronged approach to CO2 regulation. The Clean Air Act can set plant-by-plant performance standards while a declining cap covers the broader economy. (That’s the approach taken by the Kerry/Boxer Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act.) So the study shouldn’t be used to entirely discount the idea of cap-and-trade plans–but that doesn’t mean it won’t be.
Urban vs. rural. Jacobson’s research also pits the interests of rural and urban communities against each other. Cities could stand to suffer more under climate change, but the senators representing large urban areas already have proportionately less power to push through legislation that would curb CO2 pollution. California, with its 37 million residents and numerous polluted urban areas, has two senators who want to enact climate legislation; Wyoming, with 540,000 residents and vast expanses of rural land, has two senators who oppose climate legislation.
Urban and rural areas have already been at odds over climate policy—and that was before we had any evidence that cities might really get the short end of the stick. The “domes” research provides more fodder for the fight. It underscores the essential unfairness of the effects of carbon pollution, and raises the question of just how much Wyoming should have to say about the health of Californians.
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Posted in Charts, Database, Copenhagen COP15, Global Warming issues, New York, Real World's News, Reporting from Washington DC, The US States
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 18th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
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| Ouch! It’s my Jewish Identity! By Moshe Feiglin |
| {Moshe Feiglin, a member of the Knesset, is an extreme right winger struggling to take over the Likud Party.}
28 Adar, 5770
March 14, ‘10 {see – significantly – it does not say 2010}
Translated from the NRG website {we do not know what NRG stands for}
“Israel’s problem is its public relations,” people reason as they attempt to explain how it is that Israel is always at the receiving end of the world’s criticism and hatred. “Israel simply doesn’t know how to highlight all of its positive points.”
But the problem is not simply lack of budget for public relations, as the Foreign Ministry would like us to believe. There is also no dearth of eloquent Israelis and fluent English speakers who could take Israel’s case to the world. The problem is that instead of explaining its own position, Israel explains the position of its enemies.
When is the last time that you heard an official Israeli representative simply state that this is our Land – without ifs, ands and buts? Simply, “The Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish Nation, period.” Has the prime minister made such a statement? Any minister? Perhaps an ambassador?
All the torrents of claims against Israel can be distilled to this one simple question: Whose land is this, anyway? But here’s the caveat: It is impossible to say that this is our Land without falling back on our Jewish foundations. To avoid that unthinkable eventuality, Israel trades it ultimate playing card for paltry claims that its soldiers are the most humane in the world – and endangers their lives to prove it – and that it is the most democratic regime in the region.
The world, though, doesn’t really care if Israel’s armed forces are humane. What determines if you are right or wrong is if the ground under their feet belongs to you or not. The most courteous intruder is still an intruder who belongs in jail.
The refusal to admit that this is our Land – or in broader terms, to re-connect as a state to our Jewish identity – has brought Israel to its diplomatic knees. Netanyahu’s senior ministers have arrest warrants waiting for them in Israel’s capitals and the assassins of arch-terrorist Mabhouh are wanted all over the world while mass-murderer Ahmadinijad is invited to lecture at Columbia University. The modern-day Amalek does not tell the world that he is humane. He explains that he is right. The world accepts this as fact because Israel’s leadership plays straight into his hands.
Just like the first Amalek, who attacked Israel when the entire world was afraid to initiate a fight with the nation that had just defeated the Egyptian empire, so Ahmadinijad publicly declares his intention to destroy Israel and proceeds with his technical preparations basically unhindered.
It may be difficult to understand why, instead of losing his legitimacy, Ahmadinijad has managed to place a flashing and threatening question mark over Israel’s head. The reason is that the “State of all its citizens” (as per former Chief Justice Aharon Barak) or the “Singapore of the Middle East” (as per President Shimon Peres) or the “place under the sun” (as per PM Netanyahu) is incapable of standing proud and firm behind its identity and justifying its existence. It really is not right to establish another Singapore at the expense of the “Palestinians.” And there is plenty of place under the sun on the Canary Islands. It comes at a more reasonable price and will not drag the entire world into endless wars.
For those readers who do not understand the critical implications of our Jewish identity for our very survival, I would like to quote the following story:
In the first Lebanon War in 1982, the IDF essentially forced the PLO terror organization out of Lebanon and into exile in Tunisia. The PLO was in complete disarray. One of the prisoners in the Israeli detention camp, Ansar, was a senior terrorist, admired by his henchmen. His name was Salah Taamari and he was a broken man.
In the book about Taamari, Mine Enemy, penned by Israeli journalists Amalia and Aharon Barnea, Taamari told Barnea of the transformation he underwent in Ansar. While in prison, he had completely despaired of any hope that the Palestinians would one day realize any of their territorial dreams. He was ready to renounce the struggle and was well on the way to convincing his prison-mates that they would never defeat Israel.
Then, one Passover, he witnessed a Jewish prison guard eating a pita. Taamari was shocked, and asked his jailer how he could so unashamedly eat bread on Passover.
The Jew replied: “I feel no obligation to events that occurred to my nation over 2,000 years ago. I have no connection to that.”
That entire night Taamari could not sleep. He thought to himself: “A nation whose members have no connection to their past, and are capable of so openly transgressing their most important laws, has cut off all its roots to the Land.”
He concluded that the Palestinians could, in fact, achieve all their goals. From that moment, he determined “to fight for everything – not a percentage, not some crumbs that the Israelis might throw us – but for everything. Because opposing us is a nation that has no connection to its roots, which are no longer of interest to it.”
Taamari goes on to relate how he shared this insight with “tens of thousands of his colleagues, and all were convinced.”
Taamari did indeed convince his co-terrorists and breathed new life into the war against Israel. It is hard to exaggerate the damage done by the pita in the mouth of just one Israeli prison guard on the holiday of Passover.
What does this have to do with the current Jerusalem imbroglio? Here is another story – short and current. This story is not about an anonymous soldier who is disconnected from his Jewish roots, but about the prime minister of Israel, who is estranged from his. On his recent trip to Russia, Binyamin Netanyahu chose the non-kosher restaurant, Pushkin, as the venue for his meeting with Greek PM Papandreou. The whole world was able to watch as the leader of the Jewish nation dined heartily on the finest that non-kosher cuisine has to offer.
One pita in the mouth of an anonymous soldier was enough to sow the seeds of defeat in Israel’s triumph in Lebanon. What damage will we suffer from the unkosher food in the mouth of the prime minister of Israel?
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THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2010
‘Day of Rage’ Engulfs Palestine
Mel Frykberg
QALANDIA, West Bank, Mar 17 (IPS) – On Tuesday tens of hundreds of Palestinians of all political persuasions took to the streets, alleys and sidewalks as widespread rioting and protests spread across East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza and into Israel proper. The worst violence in several years, something of a mini Intifadah or uprising, followed the Islamist movement Hamas calling for a ‘Day of Rage’ to protest Israel’s continued Judaisation of East Jerusalem and what Palestinians see as an attempt to take over Islamic holy sites.
The numbers rioting were kept relatively low by Israeli military roadblocks and a closure imposed on the West Bank to prevent Palestinians from reaching Jerusalem. More than 100 Palestinians were wounded, 16 of them suffering broken bones and stomach and eye injuries, and about 80 arrested as the clashes and confrontations with Israeli security forces spread. A number of Israeli soldiers and police were also injured.
On Wednesday thousands of Israeli security forces remained on high alert as further riots were predicted. Palestinian security forces were also placed on high alert amidst fears that protests could spread to Israeli checkpoints and settlements in the West Bank and further inflame an already volatile situation.
“We will be back tomorrow after school. This is not the end. We are going to come here every day and continue the protests for weeks and months,” one of the protestors told IPS.
“This is just the beginning. This is going to be an ongoing campaign against the Israeli occupation and the desecration of our holy sites,” Nasser Edwan (name changed), a local youth leader, told IPS.
At Qalandia refugee camp and checkpoint, situated between Jerusalem and Ramallah, hundreds of school boys and young men, continually approached the Israeli checkpoint in waves, hurling stones and bottles.
Elsewhere Molotov cocktails were thrown, garbage containers set alight and one Israeli policeman shot by a Palestinian assailant.
The Israel Defence Forces tried to disperse the rioters with rubber-coated metal bullets and teargas. But just as soon as the protestors were driven back they would advance again on the checkpoint. Scores were injured and a number arrested.
Generally protests here have a set formula with both sides following unspoken rules. Hitherto clashes in various West Bank villages and in East Jerusalem normally last a few hours after which both sides – the Israeli soldiers and the Palestinian protestors – tire and return to “base”.
Previous protests at Qalandia witnessed by IPS generally dissipated after several hours.
However, Tuesday’s violence raged from early in the morning to well into the night. Similar scenarios unfolded in various locations of occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank while thousands of Gazans took to the streets.
There has been a palpable atmosphere of suppressed anger amongst Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank for the last few weeks due to Israel’s accelerated Judaisation of East Jerusalem.
Tensions were exacerbated on Monday with the inauguration of a Jewish synagogue on a site where a mosque used to be in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s old city.
Attempts by Jewish extremists to enter the Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest shrine have also fuelled Palestinian anger. These extremists have stated that they would like to build the third Jewish Temple on Al Aqsa’s remains.
The importance and significance of Al Aqsa even to moderate and secular Muslims is unappreciated in many Western quarters
“I have only two sons and I love them dearly but I’m prepared to sacrifice both of them for Al Aqsa,” one IPS source, a secular and previously senior activist of the secular Fatah movement in Jerusalem’s Old City, said.
“When there were riots several weeks ago, I phoned my sons and told them to close our tourist shop and go to the mosque to defend it from the settlers. Do you think it is easy to lose my sons? Al Aqsa is a red line which nobody must cross,” he told IPS.
This is the reasoning behind the common ground found by the leadership of both Palestinian political factions, Hamas and Fatah, as they called for their respective followers to take to the streets.
Senior members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, affiliated with Fatah, met in the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem a couple of days ago before appealing to Palestinians to take action.
The leadership also met in the same hotel and called for defensive measures prior to the outbreak of the Second Intifadah in 2000 when then Israeli premier Ariel Sharon made his provocative visit to the mosque despite being warned against doing so by Israeli security.
Furthermore, the Fatah-affiliated Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades have called for the Palestinian Authority to allow them to rearm and defend Al Aqsa from the Israelis.
Israel recently pardoned over 70 former Al Aqsa members on the condition they give up their weapons and cease resistance. Hundreds of others have been pardoned by Israel over the last few years.
Hamas leader Ahmed Bahar called for a renewal of armed attacks against Israel and urged Arab states to support the resistance.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers have warned that they will retaliate against any Palestinian rioting by mounting counter-riots.
They have also warned that they will attack “Arabs and their property” if they are prevented in the future from entering the Al Aqsa compound.
While a full-scale Intifadah does not appear imminent, further large-scale unrest appears highly possible with some Israeli analysts calling Tuesday’s events an “Intifadah-Light”. |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 15th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
Reuters from Berlin, where President Mubarak, 81 years of age, had a gallbladder operation, reports that his health is improving. The problem is that 30 years in office and having made sure there is no number 2 to him, the fact that he went for an operation plunged the Egyptian economic benchmark by 2.4%. We posted the information about Japanese and Kuwait funds made available to the stagnant economy of Egypt, for purpose of green, and perhaps nuclear energy. With this new information we wonder about the meaning of that that previous posting. Is investment in Egypt these days indeed a safe idea or do the foreign banks believe that Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, former head of the IAEA, will be the winner in the upcoming elections in Egypt?
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Egypt To Secure $430 Mln Loan For Wind Farm: Agency
Date: 15-Mar-10
by Alexander Dziadosz, Reuters from Egypt.
Egypt is set to secure a $430 million loan from Japan to fund a 220-megawatt wind farm as it tries to boost its renewable energy output, the state news agency MENA said on Friday.
Egypt, an oil and gas producer, has been developing wind power along its eastern Red Sea coast. It aims to generate 12 percent of its power from wind and 20 percent from renewables overall by 2020.
The loan, inked this week, will be used to build a wind farm in Gebel el Zeit on the Gulf of Suez, the report said.
Officials say Egypt’s combined oil and gas reserves will last it roughly three decades, pushing it to develop alternative energy sources, including nuclear and solar.
Last week Egypt said it would receive a $100 million loan from the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development to fund a 1,300 megawatt power plant in the Red Sea coastal town of Ain Sokhna, east of Cairo.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 11th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
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Ihsanoglu calls for direct relations between the OIC General Secretariat and OIC Funds |
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| The Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu expressed his satisfaction over the OIC Funds’ oriented action, which has made a tangible impact, and hoped for direct relations between the Funds and the OIC General Secretariat at the level of the Islamic Conference Humanitarian Affairs Department (ICHAD) and other related departments.
Ihsanoglu, in his statement at the 3rd meeting of the OIC Funds in Doha, Qatar, on 9 March 2010, urged the Funds to work under the supervision of the OIC General Secretariat’s Finance and Administration Department using the new “financial system under which the Funds will operate in line with the OIC Financial rules and regulations, hence, rendering more transparency to their operations, which will also benefit the Funds.”
Taking into consideration the various constraints the Funds may have faced, he assured them of mobilizing all OIC resources to launch a “strong campaign to secure more financial resources for the Funds’ activities.”
The Secretary General concluded his statement by thanking His Highness Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Thani, Chairman of the Council of Funds, and the various donors, especially the State of Qatar for the tremendous efforts and dedication to convene the meeting. |
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| OIC Chief commends the results of the Third Conference of Humanitarian Organizations |
| OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu stated that the positive results of the Third Conference of Humanitarian Organizations held in Doha, Qatar, on 8 March 2010, will have a clear effect on the promotion of cooperative relations between the OIC and humanitarian organizations in the OIC Member States. This will help elaborate clear policies to address disasters and development issues in the Islamic world.
Ihsanoglu made this statement at the closing session of the two-day Conference attended by over seventy relief organizations from around the Islamic world.
The Secretary General emphasized that these results testify to the importance of the resolution adopted by the Third Extraordinary Islamic Summit Conference held in Makkah Al-Mukarramah at the initiative of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, which called for the promotion of cooperation and coordination relations between the General Secretariat and NGOs as a central development partner.
Ihsanoglu added that over forty OIC Member States suffer today from different disasters and conflicts, especially with the aggravation of climate change and its various negative implications. He maintained that these phenomena led to the defragmentation of societies and to the deterioration of relief services and development infrastructures in many parts of the Islamic world.
The Secretary General called for a new approach to address development and humanitarian assistance issues based on the coordination of efforts among governments, NGOs and the private sector. He highlighted the fact that supporting this tripartite process is a necessity at this critical stage in order to build peace and accelerate the development movement in our countries.
The Secretary General concluded his address stating that work in this field will be carried out in close coordination and cooperation with all international organizations and institutions working in the field of humanitarian development, in particular UN institutions which are doing an important work in the Islamic world. |
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Posted in Africa, Arab Asia, Arabized Africa, Copenhagen COP15, Darfur, Egypt, Futurism, Geneva, Global Warming issues, India, Indonesia, Iran, Maghreb, Malaysia, Nairobi, Pakistan, Paris, Real World's News, Reporting From the UN Headquarters in New York, Rome, Somalia, Sudan, Turkey, UN Commission on Sustainable Development
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 10th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
Fiancé of Neda, Iran’s Slain ‘Angel of Freedom,’ Heading to Geneva Rights Summit.
THE UPDATE: www.unwatch.org
02 March 2010
Fiancé of Neda, Iran’s Slain ‘Angel of Freedom,’ Heading to Geneva Rights Summit – Caspian Makan to protest Iranian government brutality.
GENEVA, March 2, 2010 – One day after Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told the UN in Geneva that President Ahmadinejad’s June election was “an exemplary exhibition of democracy and freedom,” Caspian Makan, the fiancé of slain Iranian icon Neda Agha Soltan, announced today that he will join other world-famous dissidents as a speaker at next Monday’s Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, co-organized by UN Watch, Freedom House, Ibuka and more than 20 other human rights NGOs.
Images of Neda’s bloody killing in June at the hand of the Basij paramilitary force turned an international spotlight on the brutality of the Iranian government crackdown against peaceful protesters.
The Tehran regime banned prayers for Neda in the country’s mosques, arresting anyone who held a vigil for her. Mr. Makan was then arrested and detained at Evin Prison in Tehran. He was beaten and pressured to sign a false confession.
Since his release, Mr. Makan has been an outspoken dissident for freedom in Iran, spreading Neda’s story and message around the world.
The Geneva conference is organized by a global civil society coalition of 25 human rights groups, including Burmese, Tibetan and Zimbabwean organizations (see list below), with support from the Canton of Geneva.
The two-day schedule features more than 20 action-oriented presentations and skills-building workshops, with the objective of advancing internet freedom, the struggle of dissidents against state repression, and reform of the 47-nation UN Human Rights Council.
Speakers will include former political prisoners from around the world, including Rebiya Kadeer, champion of China’s Uighur minority and Nobel Peace Prize nominee; Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina, Cuban dissident; Bo Kyi, Burmese dissident, winner of the 2008 Human Rights Watch Award; Donghyuk Shin, survivor of North Korean prison camps; and Phuntsok Nyidron, the Buddhist nun from Tibet who served 15 years in jail for recording songs of freedom.
The Geneva Summit will also feature eminent governmental and intergovernmental advocates for human rights, including Massouda Jalal, the former Afghan Minister of Women Affairs and first female presidential candidate; MP Irwin Cotler, Canadian human rights hero and former counsel to Nelson Mandela; Italian MP Matteo Mecacci, OSCE Parliamentary Assembly Rapporteur for democracy and human rights; and Jan Pronk, former Special Representative in Sudan of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Last year’s summit, covered by CNN, AP, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal, brought together former political prisoners Saad Eddin Ibrahim of Egypt, Ahmad Batebi of Iran, José Gabriel Ramón Castillo of Cuba and Soe Aung of Burma, along with many other well-known rights activists and scholars. (See videos at http://genevasummit.org/videos.)
Admission to the March 8-9, 2010 conference is free, and the public and media are invited to attend. For accreditation, program and schedule information, please visit http://genevasummit.org/.
Visit the site during the conference to follow the live webcast, blog and Twitter feed.
 
Global Civil Society Coalition
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma
Centro para la Apertura y el Desarrollo de América Latina (CADAL)
Darfur Peace and Development Center
Directorio Democratico Cubano
Fondation Genereuse Development
Freedom House
Freedom Now
Genocide Watch
Global Zimbabwe Forum
Human Rights Activists in Iran
Human Rights Without Frontiers Int’l
IBUKA
Ingénieurs du monde
Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children
International Federation of Liberal Youth (IFLRY)
International Campaign to End Genocide
International Association of Genocide Scholars
Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme
LiNK
Respekt Institut
Stop Child Executions
Tibetan Women’s Association
UN Watch
Zimbabwe Advocacy Office
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“Giving Iran Seat on U.N. Rights Council Would Legitimize Its Brutality,” Says Boyfriend of Killed Protest Icon
Patrick Goodenough
March 10, 2010
An Iranian whose fiancée’s death by gunfire became a symbol of opposition to the regime during post-election protests last year made an impassioned appeal Tuesday for Tehran to be denied a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council in elections this spring.
Addressing a gathering of dissidents and human rights advocates in Geneva, Caspian Makan, a photojournalist who fled Iran late last year after being detained for more than 60 days, said Iranian membership in the U.N.’s top human rights body would be a “slap in the face” of other members.
It would encourage other countries that have a tendency to flout human rights and undermine the credibility of the U.N. and the council, he said, according to a translation provided by event organizers.
“I feel furthermore that if the Iranian regime became a member, that would legitimize the inhuman and cruel acts the regime has perpetuated against its population,” Makan added. “Giving it legitimacy would encourage them to go further still.”
The U.N. has confirmed that Iran has submitted in writing its candidacy to become a member of the HRC.
On May 13, the General Assembly will vote by secret ballot to fill 14 of the Geneva-based council’s 47 seats. Iran and four other countries – Thailand, Qatar, Malaysia and the Maldives – will compete to fill four available seats set aside for the Asian regional group.
Makan was speaking Tuesday at the Geneva Summit for Human Rights, Tolerance and Democracy, a two-day event that brought together some 500 people from more than 60 countries, to discuss issues organizers say are mostly neglected by the HRC.
He told the gathering about Neda Agha Soltan, the 26-year old “deep thinker” and “artist at heart” with whom he had fallen in love after meeting her on a trip.
Makan, 38, said they had tended in the past not to vote in elections because they were seen as a charade, and taking part would be seen as “participating in the regime to some extent.”
But the 2009 election had seemed to offer in the shape of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi a “lesser evil” for young Iranians who “above all else wanted to get rid of Mr. [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad.”
Once it became clear that the election was rigged in favor of the incumbent, he said, Soltan had joined the protests.
Makan said that while trying to do his job he was an eyewitness to the violent clampdown by “the mercenaries of the regime” and “saw firsthand that the army of the revolution was shooting and killing the demonstrators from a helicopter.”
Four days before she died, he had urged Soltan to keep away from the demonstrations. “She said, ‘You know Caspian, I love you, I love being with you, but what is most important to me is the freedom of our people.”
On June 20, Soltan was shot in the chest on a Tehran street, apparently by a Basij militia sniper. Amateur video footage capturing the moments after the shooting was posted online and seen around the world.
“We have seen many people who have been wounded and killed, but this struck the world particularly hard,” Makan said of his fiancee’s death.
“We were able to see in the footage how good and kind she was and admire her attitude when faced with death, to admire her courage as a symbol of liberty, as she died hoping for a better life for the millions of Iranians who remained behind.”
Human rights researchers say at least 40 Iranians died during June and that the number more than doubled in the months that followed. The official figure stands at 44.
Last month, Mahmoud Abbaszadeh Meshkini, director-general of Iran’s Interior Ministry – whose functions including policing and overseeing elections – told the HRC that the June 2009 presidential election had been “an exemplary exhibition of democracy and freedom.”
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 8th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
We picked up some ideas from Katie McCaskey of an aol blog – http://www.housingwatch.com/2010/02/19/kill-your-lawn-earn-some-green/
Katie pointed out that Southern California residents have now further good financial reasons for doing sane things and rip out their water-wasting turf – did you hear that they will get even a check in the mail?
These programs were instituted by Southern California utilities because of water shortage and above triggered my memory of things past that occured when I tried to do sane things in New York State and found that one must bow to the conventional narrow minds running the system.
In Southern California homeowners are now required to replace grass with drought-tolerant, native plant species or install permeable surfaces which filter water back into the ground. Common permeable surfaces that are allowed include: flagstone, brick, and gravel. The rebate is $1 per square foot, up to a maximum of 2,000 feet.
Cyberhomes blogger Marcie Geffner writes:
The rebate might not be enough to persuade homeowners who really love their lawns. But for me, the offer was a no-brainer as I wanted to replace my big boring lawns with flagstone walkways, cactus and other plants that are more natural to the climate, if not necessarily native.
Other water-saving rebates available through LADWP include incentives to replace toilets and clothes washers with high-efficiency models, timer controlled irrigation, and pressure-reduced sprinkler nozzles. If you’re willing, there is even a rebate for installing synthetic turf.
Kathie McCaskey suggests – “Check with your local utility company or DSIRE.org to see what environmentally-conscious rebates are available in your area.”
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 6th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
Arctic Shelf Leaking Potent Greenhouse Gas
By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 5, 2010 (IPS) – The frozen cap trapping billions of tonnes of methane under the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean is leaking and venting the powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, new research shows.
It is not known if this may be one of the first indicators of a feedback loop accelerating global warming.
Researchers estimate that eight million tonnes in annual methane emissions are being released from the shallow East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which is equivalent to all the methane released from the world’s oceans, covering 71 percent of the planet.
On a global scale of methane emissions from the land-based sources – animals, rice paddies, rotting vegetation – the newly measured emissions from the Siberian seabed are less than two percent.
“That’s still very significant,” Natalia Shakhova, a researcher at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, told IPS. “Before, it was assumed that this region had zero emissions.”
Methane concentrations measured over the oceans are currently about 0.6 to 0.7 parts per million (ppm), but they are now 1.85 in the Arctic Ocean generally, and between 2.6 and 8.2 ppm in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, an area roughly two million square kilometres in size, said Shakhova.
Shakhova, and her University of Alaska colleague Igor Semiletov, led eight international expeditions to one of the world’s most remote and desolate regions and published their results in the Mar. 5 edition of the journal Science.
Global methane levels have risen each year since 2007 after being constant for a decade, reports Ed Dlugokencky of the Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, which is run by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“We saw an increase in CH4 (methane) growth rate in 2007 in the Arctic… but it did not increase in 2008,” Dlugokencky, an expert on atmospheric methane told IPS via email.
He suspects Siberia’s subsea emissions are not new but have been underway for some time, and he also says Shakhova’s estimate of eight million tonnes needs to be verified by other means. However, he acknowledges this study represents the first direct measurements ever done in the region and stresses the urgency for more investigation.
In the last few years, researchers have been shocked to see Arctic Ocean “on the boil” in places as gases from deep below come bubbling to the surface. Large parts of the Arctic Ocean floor along coastal areas is actually permafrost that was flooded thousands of years ago after the big melt from the last ice age.
Permafrost is frozen soil and contains very large amounts of carbon and methane. The extremely cold waters of the Arctic and its ice cover kept the subsea permafrost cold enough so it has been melting extremely slowly. Until now.
Surface temperatures over much of the Arctic landscape and the Siberian landscape, particularly in summer, have jumped six to 10 degrees C above normal in recent years. That has lead to a massive increase in the flows of the many rivers that terminate in the Arctic Ocean.
Shakhova and colleagues believe this substantial increase of warmer water into the shallow East Siberian Shelf has accelerated the melting of the subsea permafrost, in effect fracturing the frozen cap and allowing methane to escape into the atmosphere. “Our concern is that the subsea permafrost has been showing signs of destabilisation already,” she said in a release.
“If it further destabilises, the methane emissions may not be teragrammes, it would be significantly larger,” she said. A teragramme is a trillion grammes, or one million tonnes.
Methane – a greenhouse gas approximately 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide – is commonly called methane hydrates when it is frozen in permafrost or under the sea. The total volumes are unknown.
“The release to the atmosphere of only one percent of the methane assumed to be stored in shallow hydrate deposits might alter the current atmospheric burden of methane up to three to four times,” Shakhova said in a release.
“The climatic consequences of this are hard to predict,” she said.
Shakhova’s study is just one of at least a dozen others that clearly show the Arctic region is not only melting but also emitting more carbon and methane.
Permafrost spans 13 million square kilometres of the land in Alaska, Canada, Siberia and parts of Europe. A new Canadian study documented that the southernmost permafrost limit has retreated 130 kilometres over the past 50 years ago in Quebec’s James Bay region.
Another Canadian study released last year showed that the region was getting darker and absorbing more heat in the summer because of a significant shift in plant growth from grasses and lichen to larger shrubs over the past 30 years due to warmer temperatures.
A permafrost “retreat” has been observed over much of the southern fringe of the permafrost zone and could result in emissions a billion tonnes of carbon per year – human emissions are seven to eight billion tonnes – by mid-century, a University of Florida study estimated.
Without major reductions in those human emissions, mainly burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, the top two to three metres of permafrost across the entire Arctic region could thaw by the end of this century, warned a major report, “Arctic Climate Feedbacks: Global Implications”, released by the World Wildlife Fund last September.
Should that happen, the volumes of carbon and methane released could be many times higher than what is presently in the atmosphere, driving up the global average temperatures by six, eight, or even 10 degrees C. The consequences are unimaginable.
“The changes we are (currently) seeing are not entirely unexpected, they are just happening far sooner,” said Mark Serreze, senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in the U.S. state of Colorado and co-author of Arctic Climate Feedbacks report.
If the methane hydrates start to melt or large areas of permafrost “that will be very bad news for humanity”, Serreze told IPS in September.
“The world is a very small place and we have not been good stewards. Climate change is symptom of this poor stewardship,” he said.
“The way we’re going right now, I’m not optimistic that we will avoid some kind of tipping point.”
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 2nd, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
The United Arab Emirates, led by Abu Dhabi, is the first member of OPEC to associate itself with the so called Copenhagen Note by a Valentine’s day Association message to the World Community – we are with you – we take responsibility for action. This from Mari Luomi’s blog for the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
From: Jones Andrew <Andrew.Jones@upi-fiia.fi>
date: Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 4:17 AM
subject: New UPI-FIIA publication – The EU and the global climate regime: Getting back in the game.
We are pleased to announce the release of a new publication by the International Politics of Natural Resources and the Environment Research Programme at The Finnish Institute of International Affairs (UPI-FIIA):
** – The EU and the global climate regime: Getting back in the game
http://www.upi-fiia.fi/en/publication/10… Published 25.2.2010
by Thomas Spencer, Kristian Tangen, Anna Korppoo of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
The Finnish Institute of International Affairs.
http://www.upi-fiia.fi/en/blog/269/ by andrew.jones at upi-fiia.fi
web: http://www.upi-fiia.fi/
Tel: +358 206 111 734 GSM: +358 40 480 1655
Address: Kruunuvuorenkatu 4, 00160 Helsinki, Finland
** – and the Latest blog: The Opec state that clears its own, greener pat.
The Opec state that clears its own, greener path.
by Mari Luomi
ResearcherInternational Politics of Natural Resources and the Environment research programme. Published 26.2.2010
The United Arab Emirates, led by its wealthiest emirate Abu Dhabi, is finally taking the steps necessary to align its domestic and international policies in the field of climate change. Who would have thought just three years ago that the UAE would stand out as the only Opec state to associate itself to a controversial climate change accord, have a Climate Change Envoy, dub nuclear as clean energy, and, most importantly, set international climate change mitigation ahead of oil industry interests.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) recently became the first Opec member state to associate itself with the disputed Copenhagen Accord. It is also establishing a Directorate of Energy and Climate Change and has flirted with the possibility of announcing emission cuts in comparison to business-as-usual levels. What are the implications of these simultaneous moves for the country and, most interestingly, for the Opec bloc?
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The Association Letter:
The UAE’s association letter, sent to the UN Climate Convention (UNFCCC) on Valentine’s day, was designed to be a clear message to the international community that the UAE is concerned about the negative impacts of climate change and is willing to do its fair share in mitigating climate change. This comes despite the fact that the UNFCCC places no commitments on the country to cut its emissions. The UAE is exempt from emission cuts because, despite its GDP per capita rank placing it in the global top-15, it is classified under the Convention as a developing country.
The association letter notes that the UAE has initiated ‘numerous domestic programmes’ that would reduce the UAE’s emissions to below business-as-usual levels. It also promises a more detailed follow-up on the issue. One would hope that this means that the UAE is planning to set a similar goal as, for example, Singapore, a high-income developing country, which has pledged to cut emissions by 16% in relation to BAU emissions by 2020.
Three issues are highlighted in the letter:
- The common but differentiated responsibilities principle;
- The economic impacts of climate change and its mitigation on oil exporting states and
- The importance of promoting carbon capture and storage, as well as nuclear energy technologies, under the international climate negotiating regime.
The importance of countries associating with the Copenhagen Accord is still contingent on the form and direction that the currently disarrayed international negotiations take over the coming months. Also, the content of the UAE letter has only a few surprises, including the potential emission target and the mention of nuclear energy.
What is significant, however, is that no other Opec state has so far associated itself with the Accord. Kuwait has explicitly rejected it. Saudi Arabia, which took part in the group of 25-30 countries that drafted the Copenhagen Accord, informally representing the voice and interests of the OPEC group, has not associated itself so far. Rather, in a submission to the UNFCCC in mid-February, the country states that the Accord ‘has no legal status within the UNFCCC, and thus can’t be used as basis or reference for further negotiations’.
If any Opec country should back the document, it is Saudi Arabia, given that it participated in negotiating the text, especially since the issue of the impacts of the so-called response measures (policies and measures taken to cut greenhouse gas emissions) and the need to assist countries vulnerable to them, which is one of the key demands of Saudi Arabia and the OPEC group, is included in the Accord.
—————
Climate Change Directorate:
Abu Dhabi’s major English newspaper The National reported today on the setting up of a new Directorate of Energy and Climate Change under the UAE’s Foreign Ministry. To understand the significance of this move, one must take a quick dive into the national context.
Abu Dhabi, owner of over 7% of the world’s proven oil reserves and nine tenths of the total oil reserves of the seven-emirate federation it presides over, has for roughly three years now been building itself an image of a ‘future energy giant’. It has declared itself to be the ‘green energy leader of the region’ and, to earn the title, it has built up an impressive list of alternative energy initiatives, most of which converge under the umbrella of the Masdar Initiative, an alternative energy and technology venture by the Mubadala Development Company. What is best, international media and governments have bought the brand: from the President of Maldives to Ban Ki Moon, the world is praising Masdar and Abu Dhabi for their efforts.
The reality is of course not so green and rosy. The United Arab Emirates still ranks near bottom in several international rankings of environmental sustainability: world’s largest ecological footprint and high per capita CO2 emissions, to mention just two examples. When it comes to development, economic sustainability still trumps environmental sustainability. However, there are a number of important individuals in Abu Dhabi and elsewhere, who would like to see this change, at least to some extent. As a sign of this, Abu Dhabi announced in January last year a 7% renewables target for 2020.
Interestingly, it is Masdar’s CEO, Sultan Al Jaber, who has become the main voice in Abu Dhabi in promoting climate change mitigation during the past couple of years, that will be leading the Directorate with the titles of Assistant Foreign Minister and Special Envoy on Energy and Climate Change, according to The National.
With potentially wide implications for the UAE’s international climate policy positioning, the establishment of the Climate Change Directorate is a tour de force from those elite members in Abu Dhabi who have been pushing for the emirate (and with it the federation) to promote development that takes account of environmental sustainability in addition to the usual economic sustainability.
These two moves – the association with the Accord and the new Envoy – might mainly have been taken for branding purposes, but what is important is that they will potentially have far-reaching implications for Opec’s negotiating dynamics that have so far been dominated by a very different tone. They are also finally bringing the ambitious national projects of Abu Dhabi and the UAE’s international climate policy closer to each other.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 27th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
W. W. Norton & Company / By Joseph Stiglitz
The Great American Bank Robbery:How did the big banks nearly take down the entire economy and still continue to profit? Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz explains.
February 27, 2010 |
The following is Part I of a two-part excerpt from Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph Stiglitz ( W.W. Norton & Co., 2010). Read AlterNet’s recent interview with Stiglitz by Zach Carter.
Bankruptcy is a key feature of capitalism. Firms sometimes are unable to repay what they owe creditors. Financial reorganization has become a fact of life in many industries. The United States is lucky in having a particularly effective way of giving firms a fresh start—Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code, which has been used repeatedly, for example, by the airlines. Airplanes keep flying; jobs and assets are preserved. Shareholders typically lose everything, and bondholders become the new shareholders. Under new management, and without the burden of debt, the airline can go on. The government plays a limited role in these restructurings: bankruptcy courts make sure that all creditors are treated fairly and that management doesn’t steal the assets of the firm for its own benefits.
Banks differ in one respect: the government has a stake because it insures deposits….The reason the government insures deposits is to preserve the stability of the financial system, which is important to preserving the stability of the economy. But if a bank gets into trouble, the basic procedure should be the same: shareholders lose everything; bondholders become the new shareholders. Often, the value of the bonds is sufficiently great that that is all that needs to be done. For instance, at the time of the bailout, Citibank, the largest American bank, with assets of $2 trillion, had some $350 billion of long-term bonds. Because there are no obligatory payments with equity, if there had been a debt-to-equity conversion, the bank wouldn’t have had to pay the billions and billions of dollars of interest on these bonds. Not having to pay out the billions of dollars of interest puts the bank in much better stead. In such an instance, the role of the government is little different from the oversight role the government plays in the bankruptcy of an ordinary firm.
Sometimes, though, the bank has been so badly managed that what is owed to depositors is greater than the assets of the bank. (This was the case for many of the banks in the savings and loan debacle in the late 1980s and in the current crisis.) Then the government has to come in to honor its commitments to depositors. The government becomes, in effect, the (possibly partial) owner, though typically it tries to sell the bank as soon as it can or find someone to take it over. Because the bankrupt bank has liabilities greater than its assets, the government typically has to pay the acquiring bank to do this, in effect filling the hole in the balance sheet. This process is called conservatorship. Usually the switch in ownership is so seamless that depositors and other customers wouldn’t even know that something had happened unless they read about it in the press. Occasionally, when an appropriate suitor can’t be found quickly, the government runs the bank for a while. (The opponents of conservatorship tried to tarnish this traditional approach by calling it nationalization. Obama suggested that this wasn’t the American way. But he was wrong: conservatorship, including the possibility of temporary government ownership when all else failed, was the traditional approach; the massive government gifts to banks were what was unprecedented. Since even the banks that were taken over by the government were always eventually sold, some suggested that the process be called preprivatization.)
Long experience has taught that when banks are at risk of failure, their managers engage in behaviors that risk taxpayers losing even more money. The banks may, for instance, undertake big bets: if they win, they keep the proceeds; if they lose, so what? They would have died anyway. That’s why there are laws saying that when a bank’s capital is low, it should be shut down or put under conservatorship. Bank regulators don’t wait until all of the money is gone. They want to be sure that when a depositor puts his debit card into the ATM and it says, “insufficient funds,” it’s because there are insufficient funds in the account, not insufficient funds in the bank. When the regulators see that a bank has too little money, they put the bank on notice to get more capital, and if it can’t, they take further action of the kind just described.
As the crisis of 2008 gained momentum, the government should have played by the rules of capitalism and forced a financial reorganization. Financial reorganizations—giving a fresh start—are not the end of the world. Indeed, they might represent the beginning of a new world, one in which incentives are better aligned and in which lending is rekindled. Had the government forced a financial restructuring of the banks in the way just described, there would have been little need for taxpayer money, or even further government involvement. Such a conversion increases the overall value of the firm because it reduces the likelihood of bankruptcy, thereby not only saving the high transaction costs of going through bankruptcy but also preserving the value of the ongoing concern. That means that if the shareholders are wiped out and the bondholders become the new “owners,” the bondholders’ long-term prospects are better than they were while the bank remained in limbo, when they were not sure whether it would survive and not sure of either the size or the terms of any government handout.
The bondholders involved in a restructuring would have gotten another gift, at least according to the banks own logic. The bankers claimed that the market was underestimating the true value of the mortgages on their books (and other bank assets). That may have been the case—or it may not have been. If it is not, it is totally unreasonable to make taxpayers bear the cost of the banks’ mistake, but if the assets were really worth as much as the bankers said, then the bondholders would get the upside.
The Obama administration has argued that the big banks are not only too big to fail but also too big to be financially restructured (or, as I refer to it later, “too big to be resolved”), too big to play by the ordinary rules of capitalism. Being too big to be financially restructured means that if the bank is on the brink of failure, there is but one source of money: the taxpayer. And under this novel and unproven doctrine, hundreds of billions have been poured into the financial system.
If it is true that America’s biggest banks are too big to be “resolved,” this has profound implications for our banking system going forward—implications the administration so far has refused to own up to. If, for instance, bondholders are in effect guaranteed because these institutions are too big to be financially restructured, then the market economy can exert no effective discipline on the banks. They get access to cheaper capital than they should, because those providing the capital know that the taxpayers will pick up any losses. If the government is providing a guarantee, whether explicit or implicit, the banks aren’t bearing all the risks associated with each decision they make—the risks borne by markets (shareholders, bondholders) are less than those borne by society as a whole, and so resources will go in the wrong place. Because too-big-to-be-restructured banks have access to funds at lower interest rates than they should, the whole capital market is distorted. They grow at the expense of their smaller rivals, who do not have this guarantee. They can easily come to dominate the financial system, not through greater prowess and ingenuity but because of the tacit government support. It should be clear: these too-big-to-be-restructured banks cannot operate as ordinary market-based banks.
I actually think that all of this discussion about too-big-to-restructured banks was just a ruse. It was a ploy that worked, based on fear-mongering. Just as Bush used 9/11 and the fears of terrorism to justify so much of what he did, the Treasury under both Bush and Obama used 9/15—the day that Lehman collapsed—and the fears of another meltdown as a tool to extract as much as possible for the banks and the bankers that had brought the world to the brink of economic ruin.
The argument is that, if only the Fed and Treasury had rescued Lehman Brothers, the whole crisis would have been avoided. The implication—seemingly taken on board by the Obama administration—is, when in doubt, bail out, and massively so. To skimp is to be penny wise and pound foolish.
But that is the wrong lesson to learn from the Lehman episode. The notion that if only Lehman Brothers had been rescued all would have been fine is sheer nonsense. Lehman Brothers was a consequence, not a cause: it was the consequence of flawed lending practices and inadequate oversight by regulators. Whether Lehman Brothers had or had not been bailed out, the global economy was headed for difficulties. Prior to the crisis, as I have noted, the global economy had been supported by the bubble and excessive borrowing. That game is over—and was already over well before Lehman’s collapse. The collapse almost surely accelerated the whole process of deleveraging; it brought out into the open the long-festering problems, the fact that the banks didn’t know their net worth and knew that accordingly they couldn’t know that of any other firm to whom they might lend. A more orderly process would have imposed fewer costs in the short run, but “counterfactual history” is always problematic.
There are those who believe that it is better to take one’s medicine and be done with it, that a slow unwinding of the excesses would last years longer, with even greater costs. Perhaps, on the other hand, the slow recapitalization of the banks would have occurred faster than the losses would have become apparent. In this view, papering over the losses with dishonest accounting (as in this crisis, as well as in the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s) would be doing more than just providing symptomatic relief. Lowering the fever may actually help in the recovery. A third view holds that Lehman’s collapse actually saved the entire financial system: without it, it would have been difficult to galvanize the political support required to bail out the banks. (It was hard enough to do so after its collapse.)
Even if one agrees that letting Lehman Brothers fail was a mistake, there are many choices between the blank-check approach to saving the banks pursued by the Bush and Obama administrations after September 15 and the approach of Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and Tim Geithner of simply shutting down Lehman Brothers and praying that everything will work out in the end.
The government was obligated to save depositors, but that didn’t mean it had to provide taxpayer money to also save bondholders and shareholders. As noted earlier, standard procedures would have meant that the institution be saved and the shareholders wiped out, with the bondholders becoming the new shareholders. Lehman had no insured depositors; it was an investment bank. But it had something almost equivalent—it borrowed short-term money from the “market” through commercial paper held by money market funds, which acted much like banks. (One can even write checks on these accounts.) That’s why the part of the financial system involving money markets and investment banks is often called the shadow banking system. It arose, in part, to circumvent the regulations imposed on the real banking system—to ensure its safety and stability. Lehman’s collapse induced a run on the shadow banking system, much as there used to be runs on the real banking system before deposit insurance was provided; to stop the run, the government provided insurance to the shadow banking system.
Those opposed to financial restructuring (conservatorship) for the banks that are in trouble say that if the bondholders are not fully protected, a bank’s remaining creditors—those providing short-term funds without a government guarantee—will flee if a restructuring appears imminent. But such a conclusion defies economic logic. If these creditors are rational, they would realize that they benefit enormously from the greater stability of the firm provided by conservatorship and the debt-to-equity conversion. If they were willing to keep their funds in the bank before, they should be even more willing to do so now. And if the government has no confidence in the rationality of these supposedly smart financiers, they could provide a guarantee, though they should charge a premium for it. In the end, the Bush and Obama administrations not only bailed out the shareholders but also provided guarantees. The guarantees effectively eviscerated the argument for the generous treatment of shareholders and long-term bondholders.
Under financial restructuring, there are two big losers. The executives of the banks will almost surely go, and they will be unhappy. The shareholders too will be unhappy, because they will have lost everything. But that is the nature of risk-taking in capitalism—the only justification for the above-normal returns that they enjoyed during the boom is the risk of a loss.
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate, is a professor of economics at Columbia University.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 27th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
from: www.Tomdispatch.com - By Bill McKibben
February 27, 2010 |
Twenty-one years ago, in 1989, I wrote what many have called the first book for a general audience on global warming. One of the more interesting reviews came from the Wall Street Journal. It was a mixed and judicious appraisal. “The subject,” the reviewer said, “is important, the notion is arresting, and Mr. McKibben argues convincingly.” And that was not an outlier: around the same time, the first president Bush announced that he planned to “fight the greenhouse effect with the White House effect.”
I doubt that’s what the Journal will say about my next book when it comes out in a few weeks, and I know that no GOP presidential contender would now dream of acknowledging that human beings are warming the planet. Sarah Palin is currently calling climate science “snake oil” and last week, the Utah legislature, in a move straight out of the King Canute playbook, passed a resolution condemning “a well organized and ongoing effort to manipulate global temperature data in order to produce a global warming outcome” on a nearly party-line vote.
And here’s what’s odd. In 1989, I could fit just about every scientific study on climate change on top of my desk. The science was still thin. If my reporting made me think it was nonetheless convincing, many scientists were not yet prepared to agree.
Now, you could fill the Superdome with climate-change research data. (You might not want to, though, since Hurricane Katrina demonstrated just how easy it was to rip holes in its roof.) Every major scientific body in the world has produced reports confirming the peril. All 15 of the warmest years on record have come in the two decades that have passed since 1989. In the meantime, the Earth’s major natural systems have all shown undeniable signs of rapid flux: melting Arctic and glacial ice, rapidly acidifying seawater, and so on.
Somehow, though, the onslaught against the science of climate change has never been stronger, and its effects, at least in the U.S., never more obvious: fewer Americans believe humans are warming the planet. At least partly as a result, Congress feels little need to consider global-warming legislation, no less pass it; and as a result of that failure, progress towards any kind of international agreement on climate change has essentially ground to a halt.
Climate-Change Denial as an O.J. Moment:
The campaign against climate science has been enormously clever, and enormously effective. It’s worth trying to understand how they’ve done it. The best analogy, I think, is to the O.J. Simpson trial, an event that’s begun to recede into our collectiveKatoKaelin, anyone? Lance Ito?
The Dream Team of lawyers assembled for Simpson’s defense had a problem: it was pretty clear their guy was guilty. Nicole Brown’s blood was all over his socks, and that was just the beginning. So Johnnie Cochran, Robert Shapiro, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Robert Kardashian et al. decided to attack the process, arguing that it put Simpson’s guilt in doubt, and doubt, of course, was all they needed. Hence, those days of cross-examination about exactly how Dennis Fung had transported blood samples, or the fact that Los Angeles detective Mark Fuhrman had used racial slurs when talking to a screenwriter in 1986.
If anything, they were actually helped by the mountain of evidence. If a haystack gets big enough, the odds only increase that there will be a few needles hidden inside. Whatever they managed to find, they made the most of: in closing arguments, for instance, Cochran compared Fuhrman to Adolf Hitler and called him “a genocidal racist, a perjurer, America’s worst nightmare, and the personification of evil.” His only real audience was the jury, many of whom had good reason to dislike the Los Angeles Police Department, but the team managed to instill considerable doubt in lots of Americans tuning in on TV as well. That’s what happens when you spend week after week dwelling on the cracks in a case, no matter how small they may be.
Similarly, the immense pile of evidence now proving the science of global warming beyond any reasonable doubt is in some ways a great boon for those who would like, for a variety of reasons, to deny that the biggest problem we’ve ever faced is actually a problem at all. If you have a three-page report, it won’t be overwhelming and it’s unlikely to have many mistakes. Three thousand pages (the length of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)? That pretty much guarantees you’ll get something wrong.
memory. For those who were conscious in 1995, however, I imagine that just a few names will make it come back to life.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 27th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
Uri Avnery
27.2.10
White Lie
THIS COMING Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Israel will consider an application by a group of Israeli citizens to compel the Interior Ministry to register them as belonging to the “Israeli nation”.
Odd? Indeed.
The Israeli Interior Ministry recognizes 126 nations, but not the Israeli nation. An Israeli citizen can be registered as belonging to the Assyrian, the Tatar or the Circassian nation. But the Israeli nation? Sorry, no such thing.
According to the official doctrine, the State of Israel cannot recognize an “Israeli” nation because it is the state of the “Jewish” nation. In other words, it belongs to the Jews of Brooklyn, Budapest and Buenos Aires, even though these consider themselves as belonging to the American, Hungarian or Argentine nations.
Messy? Indeed.
THIS MESS started 113 years ago, when the Viennese Journalist Theodor Herzl wrote his book “The State of the Jews”. (That’s the true translation. The generally used name “The Jewish State” is false and means something else.) For this purpose he had to perform an acrobatic exercise. One can say that he used a white lie.
Modern Zionism was born as a direct response to modern anti-Semitism. Not by accident, the term “Zionismus” came into being some 20 years after the term “Antisemitismus” was invented in Germany. They are twins.
In Europe and the Americas another modern term was flourishing: Nationalism. Peoples which had been living together for centuries under dynasties of Emperors and Kings wanted to belong to nation-states of their own. In Argentina, the USA, France and other countries, “national” revolutions took place. The idea infected almost all peoples, big, small and tiny, from Peru to Lithuania, from Colombia to Serbia. They felt a need to belong to the place and the people where they lived and died.
All these national movements were necessarily anti-Semitic, some more, some less, because the very existence of the Jewish Diaspora ran counter to their basic perceptions. A Diaspora without a homeland, dispersed over dozens of countries, could not be reconciled with the idea of a homeland-rooted nation seeking uniformity.
Herzl understood that the new reality was inherently dangerous for the Jews. In the beginning he cherished the idea of complete assimilation: all the Jews would be baptized and disappear in the new nations. As a professional writer for the theater, he even devised the scenario: all Viennese Jews would march together to St. Stephen’s cathedral and be baptized en masse.
When he realized that this scenario was a bit far-fetched, Herzl passed from the idea of individual assimilation to what may be called collective assimilation: if there is no place for the Jews in the new nations, then they should define themselves as a nation like all the others, rooted in a homeland of their own and living in a state of their own. This idea was called Zionism.
BUT THERE was a problem: a Jewish nation did not exist. The Jews were not a nation but a religious-ethnic community.
A nation exists on one level of human society, a religious-ethnic community on another. A “nation” is an entity living together in one country with a common political will. A “community” is a religious entity based on a common faith, which can live in different countries. A German, for example, can be Catholic or Protestant; a Catholic can be German or French.
These two types of entity have two different means of survival, much as different species in nature. When a lion is in danger, it fights, it attacks. For that purpose, nature has equipped it with teeth and claws. When a gazelle is in danger, it runs. Nature has given it quick legs. Every method is good, if it is effective. (If it were not effective, the species would not have survived to this day.)
When a nation is in danger, it stands and fights. When a religious community is in danger, it moves elsewhere. The Jews, more than any others, have perfected the art of escape. Even after the horrors of the Holocaust, the Jewish Diaspora has survived and now, two generations later, it is again flourishing.
IN ORDER to invent a Jewish nation, Herzl had to ignore this difference. He pretended that the Jewish ethnic-religious community was also a Jewish nation. In other words: contrary to all other peoples, the Jews were both a nation and a religious community; as far as Jews were concerned, the two were the same. The nation was a religion, the religion was a nation.
This was the “white lie”. There was no other way: without it, Zionism could not have come into being. The new movement took the Star of David from the synagogue, the candlestick from the Temple, the blue-and-white flag from the prayer shawl. The holy land became a homeland. Zionism filled the religious symbols with secular, national content.
The first to detect the falsification were the Orthodox Rabbis. Almost all of them damned Herzl and his Zionism in no uncertain terms. The most extreme was the Rabbi of Lubavitch, who accused Herzl of destroying Judaism. The Jews, he wrote, are united by their adherence to God’s commandments. Doctor Herzl wants to supplant this God-given bond with secular nationalism.
When Herzl originated the Zionist idea, he did not intend to found the “State of the Jews” in Palestine, but in Argentina. Even when writing his book, he devoted to the country only a few lines, under the headline “Palestine or Argentina?” However, the movement he created compelled him to divert his endeavors to the Land of Israel, and so the state came into being here.
When the State of Israel was founded and the Zionist dream realized, there was no further need for the “white lie”. After the building was finished, the scaffolding should have been removed. A real Israeli nation had come into being, there was no further need for an imaginary one.
THESE DAYS Israel’s largest newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, is running a TV ad showing selected past issues. The day the State of Israel was founded, the giant headline announced: “Hebrew State!”
“Hebrew”, not “Jewish”. And not by accident: at that time, the term “Jewish state” sounded decidedly strange. In the preceding years, people in this country had got used to making a clear distinction between “Jewish” and “Hebrew”, between matters that belonged to the Diaspora and those belonging to this country: Jewish Diaspora, Jewish language (Yiddish), Jewish Stetl, Jewish religion, Jewish tradition – but Hebrew language, Hebrew agriculture, Hebrew industries, Hebrew underground organizations, Hebrew policemen.
If so, why do the words “Jewish state” appear in our Declaration of Independence? There was a simple reason for that: the UN had adopted a resolution to partition the country between an “Arab state” and a “Jewish state”. That was the legal basis of the new state. The declaration, which was drafted in haste, said therefore that we were establishing “the Jewish state (according to the UN resolution), namely the State of Israel”.
The building was finished, but the scaffolding was not taken down. On the contrary: it became the most important part of the building and dominates its facade.
LIKE MOST of us at the time, David Ben-Gurion believed that Zionism had supplanted religion and that religion had become redundant. He was quite sure that it would shrivel and disappear by itself in the new secular state. He decided that we could afford to dispense with the military service of Yeshiva bochers (Talmud school students), believing that their number would dwindle from a few hundred to almost none. The same thought caused him to allow religious schools to continue in existence. Like Herzl, who promised to “keep our Rabbis in the synagogues and our army officers in the barracks”, Ben-Gurion was certain that the state would be entirely secular.
When Herzl wrote of the “state of the Jews” he did not dream that the Jewish Diaspora would continue to exist. In his view, only the citizens of the new state would henceforth be called “Jews”, all other Jews in the world would assimilate in their various nations and disappear from view.
BUT THE “white lie” of Herzl had results he did not dream of, as did the compromises of Ben-Gurion. Religion did not wither away in Israel, but on the contrary: it is gaining control of the state. The government of Israel does not speak of the nation-state of the Israelis who live here, but of the “nation-state of the Jews” – a state that belongs to the Jews all over the world, most of whom belong to other nations.
The religious schools are eating up the general education system and are going to overpower it, if we don’t become aware of the danger and assert our Israeli essence. Voting rights are about to be accorded to Israelis residing abroad, and this is a step towards giving the vote to all Jews around the world. And, most important: the ugly weeds growing in the national-religious field – the fanatical settlers – are pushing the state in a direction that may lead to its destruction.
TO SAFEGUARD the future of Israel one has to start by removing the scaffolding from the building. In other words: burying the “white lie” of religion-equals-nation. The Israeli nation has to be recognized as the basis of the state.
If this principle is accepted, what will the future shape of Israel – within the Green Line – be like?
There are two possible models, and many variations between them.
Model A: the multi-national one. Almost all the citizens of Israel belong to one of two nations: the majority belongs to the Hebrew nation and a minority to the Palestinian-Arab nation. Each nation will enjoy autonomy in certain areas, such as culture, education and religion. Autonomy will not be territorial, but cultural (as Vladimir Ze’ev Jabotinsky proposed a hundred years ago for Czarist Russia). All will be united by Israeli citizenship and loyalty to the state. The inbuilt discrimination of the Arab minority will become a thing of the past, as well as the “demographic demon”.
Model B: the American one. The American nation is composed of all US citizens, and all US citizens constitute the American nation. An immigrant from Jamaica who acquires US citizenship automatically becomes a member of the American nation, an heir to George Washington and Abe Lincoln. All learn at school the same core program and the same history.
Which of the two models is preferable? In my view, Model B is much better. But it would depend on a dialogue between the Hebrew majority and the Arab minority. In the end, the Arab citizens will have to decide whether they prefer the status of equal partners in a general Israeli nation, or the status of a recognized, autonomous national minority in a state that acknowledges and cherishes their separate culture, side by side with the culture of the majority.
In four days, the Supreme Court will decide whether it is prepared to take the first step in this historic march.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 26th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
Cash for Leaving Oil Underground?
The start of the International Year of Biodiversity has also brought to a head the three-year-long debate on Ecuador’s Yasuni ITT initiative. The initiative centres around the Yasuni national park, one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet. It is home to indigenous peoples who have so far been isolated from the outside world—and also to an estimated 800 million barrels of oil. Ecuador is proposing that it will refrain from extracting this oil if the international community pays for half the foregone economic benefits (about 350 million dollars a year). The advantages of the unprecedented initiative are obvious. For one, Ecuador will be able to avoid massive environmental damages and social tensions that have so far resulted from oil exploitation and the unequal distribution of its revenues. And for another, climate-unfriendly oil would remain underground and the forest and its rich biodiversity would be preserved, thereby avoiding about 410 million tons of CO2 emissions. The reasoning behind this idea is that saving the region from economic exploitation is also in the global interest and should correspondingly be compensated for by the international community.
So far Germany, Spain, Sweden, and Belgium have declared that they would be prepared to contribute about half of the stipulated amount. The negotiations on the payment conditions, however, proved to be difficult: disputes include the time frame and the application of the funds. At the beginning of the year President Rafael Correa lost his patience: “We will not submit. Let them know that this country is nobody’s colony. We won’t accept shameful conditions. Keep your money.” As a consequence, his chief negotiator, Foreign Minister Fander Falconi, resigned from office. Correa has now set a deadline for June 2010. If no deal is reached by then, the oil fields will be made available for drilling. Were this to happen, a significant opportunity for greater shared global responsibility and environmental justice would have been frittered away. (Christiane Roettger)
For more information on this topic see http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk… and http://www.energy-daily.com/reports/Natu…
An interview with Ivonne Yanez of Acción Ecológica, an Ecuadorian environmental organization and co-founder of the initiative, is available at http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/11/e…
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 26th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
It is funny how the Chinese cannot take responsibility when they do something right, and the Americans cannot take responsibility when they do something wrong.
Washington bailed out GM rather then making sure first they change products and Beijing stopped companies from buying into the GM misfits but find ways to explain this without harming the feelings of GM. Good riddance to the Hummer monster – specially to the yellow one that used to cruise the New York Mid-town East Side and driven by some chief from the Department of Sanitation.
CHINA INSISTS A FLAWED APPROACH HURT GM DEAL
By Patti Waldmeir in Shanghai 2010-02-26, The Financial Times.
The collapse of General Motors’ plan to sell Hummer to a Chinese buyer reflects flaws in the deal rather than any reluctance by Beijing to sanction cross-border transactions, say Chinese government officials.
GM announced late on Wednesday that it had given up on efforts to sell its troubled Hummer operations to Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, after nearly nine months of trying.
The Detroit carmaker said it would now wind down production of the heavy sports utility vehicle.
The collapse marks another difficult sales process for GM since it began to downsize its operations more than a year ago. The carmaker backed out of plans to sell its Opel business last year, while a deal to offload its Saturn brand fell apart.
But it this week succeeded in selling Saab, its Swedish marque, to Spyker, the Dutch boutique sports car maker.
Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery, which had never produced a passenger car, said the deal collapsed because it was “unable to obtain clearance [for] the transaction from the Chinese regulators within the proposed deal timeframe”.
The deal’s deadline had already been extended by a month while Tengzhong made a last-ditch effort to obtain Beijing’s blessing.
Analysts said yesterday that Beijing’s refusal to sanction the deal was scarcely surprising, given the central government’s recent strong emphasis on encouraging Chinese consumers to buy smaller, fuel-efficient cars.
To produce the hulking Hummer, with its image of wasteful excess, could hardly be less consistent with Beijing’s pro-green automotive policies, said Mike Dunne of Dunne & Co, an Asia-based automotive consultancy: “For them to approve the Hummer deal would be a big contradiction.”
A ministry of commerce spokesman said Tengzhong failed to provide a sound purchase plan. He reiterated China’s policy of encouraging development of a renewable, green and environmentally friendly economy.
The ministry has previously insisted it never received an application by Sichuan Tengzhong – but the company repeatedly denied it.
Yale Zhang, of CSM Automotive in Shanghai, said the deal violated not only Beijing’s environmental goals but also Chinese insistence on consolidation in the auto industry, which has about 50-100 carmakers.
“This was just the wrong group making the wrong purchase in the wrong way,” said an industry insider, noting Tengzhong did not obtain provisional clearance before announcing the deal.
Beijing is thought willing to sanction the much bigger $1bn acquisition of Volvo by Geely, the big private Chinese automaker. That deal is expected to be finalised by March’s end.
Last year BAIC, the Beijing automaker, acquired some assets of Saab from GM, with central government approval.
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NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL
Goodbye, Hummer
Published: February 25, 2010
The world might be saved: It looks as if the Hummer is destined for the junkyard. The plan by General Motors to sell the muscular brand to a Chinese company went up in a puff of exhaust smoke on Wednesday after government officials in China said that they had never received the necessary application for approval and thus couldn’t grant it.
We suspect the deal collapsed because the Chinese Communist Party — which rarely shows much shame — is worried about China’s image as the most polluting nation on the planet. If true, that is good news.
There may be other good news. While some policy analysts have called — sensibly, in our opinion — for steeper gasoline taxes to encourage American drivers to embrace fuel efficiency, some economists have been skeptical. They acknowledge that drivers might decide to drive less and take public transportation more. But they warn that most could not afford to quickly dump their gas guzzlers for more fuel-efficient cars.
Yet given time, it seems, people change their ways. Americans drove 3.4 percent fewer miles in 2008 — when gas prices shot up to a peak of $4 a gallon nationally — than in 2007. And many who had bought the Hummer when a gallon of gas cost $2 decided that they couldn’t afford to tool around town in a small tank that would run, on average, around 10 miles on a gallon.
By last year, even as gas prices drifted downward, only about 9,000 Hummers were sold in the United States. That was a steep drop from 71,000 in 2006. In the spring of 2008, G.M. announced that it could not keep the sinking brand. The company is weighing two long-shot bids, but it is more than likely to wind down the brand.
Gasoline is back around $2.50 a gallon, and Americans are falling back on some of their old bad habits. Still, the Hummer’s tale is a vivid example of the power of gas prices to change Americans’ ways. It also suggests that, given the proper incentives and disincentives, all the world’s nations can embrace a greener future.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 25th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
February 25, 2010, from ALDE
Ukraine must make up for lost time.
The European Parliament today adopted its opinion on Ukraine following recent Presidential elections.
ALDE Vice President, Adina Valean (PNL, Romania), was a member of the EU’s election monitoring mission. In adopting the resolution Valean highlighted the five years of lost time in addressing the constitutional deficits in Ukraine that have held back genuine reforms and undermined Ukraine’s reputation as a stable democracy:
“Ukraine has a great deal of potential but it has sacrificed a lot of good will in recent years by its failure to resolve the internal checks and balances in its own system of governance.”
“The paradox is that the leaders of the Orange revolution now find themselves in opposition whilst Victor Yanukovych has begun his mandate by making overtures to the European Union.”
“Unfortunately for the moment there exists a lack of clarity on both sides regarding the nature of the EU’s present and future relationship with Ukraine which is hindering better cooperation and understanding. Following the change in Government, this is the first honest debate we need to have with the new leadership in Kiev, and to see what common ground and common projects we can find that are in the interest of both parties.”
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It is quite clear that the Ukraine is torn by its internal division of a west that looks forward to the EU and an east that looks backwards to Russia. We said it before – nothing wrong with a split and allowing each part to attach itself to whomever they chose. But neigh – the Ukraine has had a government that was led by the east faction, and then by one that was led by the west faction that ended up splitting in two, now we have a return to power of the east faction that has learned something by being in opposition and now approaches the West before turning to Russia. We wish them luck but think that in face of the rising economies of Asia, it is for Russia itself to start changing and push for its own incorporation with Europe. Obviously, this will mean that Russia give up its nuclear high rolling, starts aligning with the EU on issues like Iran, allow for more rights to its own people. What Russia’s efforts will do will then cause further stalling in the creation of the European Federation, but at least give a good reason for the stalling of these advances within the EU that occur anyway. The Ukraine’s future is indeed the link to the entree of Russia to its own negotiations with the EU.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 24th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
The William Antholis of Brookings ideas will constitute a separate reporting from a discussion today at the UN University Think Tank.
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A new approach to tackling climate change.
By Jagdish Bhagwati
Published: February 23 2010
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8a147a62-201a-…
The resignation last week of Yvo de Boer, the Dutch diplomat, as executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, reflected his frustration over the Copenhagen meeting andproblems in climate change treaty design.
In fact, the soon-to-expire Kyoto protocol before it was also flawed. Nearly all of the 36 industrialised rich countries in annex 1 (which excluded the developing countries) failed to fulfil the emission-reduction targets they had signed on to. The US (along with Australia) had not even ratified the protocol. The Senate, in a bipartisan 99-1 demonstration of defiance, had also rejected the protocol under the administration of Bill Clinton.
The failure of Copenhagen lay in the fact that creativity was required to bridge differences between rich and poor countries. It was badly missing. Building international institutions requires that we seek their principles in actual practice, not utopian ideas. We need to build the new protocol on principles in existing international institutions, such as the World Trade Organisation. How can this be done?
First, while the Kyoto protocol had obfuscated the distinction, it is now customary for negotiators to distinguish between commitments arising from the “stock” and “flow” aspects of climate change. The former relates to commitments arising from historical carbon emissions; the latter to current emissions. But, though the language of “legally binding” commitments is routinely used, there is no process by which anyone’s feet can be held to the fire if the delivery falls short.
With the new protocol we need to draw on the example of the WTO. There, failure to deliver on accepted trade-openness obligations can be challenged and a dispute settlement process exists where an adverse finding leads to penalties. A climate change protocol where the commitments on stock or flow aspects are mere declarations with no consequences would lead to a charade and breed cynicism, not produce action.
Second, the pledge by rich countries at Copenhagen to spend $100bn (€73.5bn, £64.5bn) on mitigation and local adaptation may be seen as a response to the “stock” issue of past damage. But the sum has been explained as funds to be given to the poorest countries and that it can come at the expense of normal aid. This reflects faulty thinking.
The US in addressing domestic pollution created the superfund after the Love Canal incident, where a successful tort action was filed against Pacific Gas & Electric in 1996 for leaking toxic chromium into the ground water. Under the superfund legislation, hazardous waste has to be eliminated by the offending company. This tort liability is also “strict”, such that it exists even if the material discharged was not known at the time to be hazardous (as carbon emissions were until recently). In addition, the people hurt can make their own tort claims.
Rejecting this legal tradition in US domestic pollution, Todd Stern, the principal US negotiator, refused to concede any liability for past emissions. This stand is even more astonishing given that Barack Obama, the US president, belongs to a party that thrives on contributions from tort lawyers.
Evidently, the US needs to reverse this stand. Each of the rich countries needs to accept a tort liability which can be pro rata to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-estimated share of historic world carbon emissions. Since the payment would be on the tort principle, the idea that the funds would substitute for normal aid would be outrageous: you do not take away the pension of a person who has won a tort settlement.
Third, on “flow” liability for current emissions, the WTO principle of a “single undertaking”, where each member state accepts obligations, is a better model than one where the world is divided into annex 1 countries and the rest. But, as with the WTO, special treatment can be accorded to developing countries in the shape of suitably extended grace periods before the obligations kick in.
Finally, in determining these obligations for developing countries such as India, it is clear thatcutting emissions can damage growth. New technologies can help, provided they can be accessed at negligible cost. However, no one will subsidise the sale of technologies to India and China. But, why not take a sizeable fraction of the tort funds in each country and use them to create the technologies by open tenders and make them freely accessible to India or China – just as we did when the US used its public funds to develop new seeds in the 1960s and made them freely accessible by India et al. Those seeds created the Green Revolution in agriculture. The same strategy could create a revolution in climate change.
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The writer is a professor at Columbia University and senior fellow in international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is chair of the Independent India-US Task Force on Copenhagen at Columbia Law School
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 23rd, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
WORLD METEOROLOGICAL ORGANIZATION
A SPECIALIZED AGENCY OF THE UNITED NATIONS
___________________________________________
INVITATION TO THE MEDIA
WMO PRESS CONFERENCE
Date and time: Friday 26 February, 11:45 am
Subject: First meeting of the High-Level Taskforce for the Global Framework for Climate Services
Speakers: Mr Michel Jarraud, WMO Secretary-General, with Members from the High-Level Taskforce
Venue: WMO Headquarters, Room B
7 bis, Avenue de la Paix, Geneva, Switzerland
BACKGROUND:
In September 2009, World Climate Conference-3 (WCC-3) decided to establish a Global Framework for Climate Services to “strengthen production, availability, delivery and application of science-based climate prediction and services”. Terms of reference were recently approved, and the composition of a High-Level Taskforce of independent advisers endorsed. On 25-26 February, the Taskforce will meet for the first time in Geneva, at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
HIGH-LEVEL TASKFORCE
Joaquim Chissano (Mozambique)
Jan Egeland (Norway)
Angus Friday (Grenada)
Eugenia Kalnay (Ms) (Argentina/USA)
Ricardo Lagos (Chile)
Julia Marton-Lefevre (Ms) (Hungary/France/USA)
Khotso Mokhele (South Africa)
Chiaki Mukai (Ms) (Japan)
Cristina Narbona Ruiz (Ms) (Spain)
Rajendra Singh Paroda (India)
Qin Dahe (China)
Emil Salim (Indonesia)
Mahmoud Abu-Zeid (Egypt)
Fiame Naomi Mata’afa (Ms) (Samoa)
For more information, including biographies: http://www.wmo.int/hlt-gfcs/index_en.htm…
————————
MEDIA ACCREDITATION
Journalists not accredited to the Palais des Nations, who wish to participate in the press conference, are encouraged to send a request to Gaëlle Sévenier, WMO Press Officer ( gsevenier at wmo.int) prior to 25 February 2010.
WMO is the United Nations’ authoritative voice on weather, climate and water
For more information please contact: Communications and Public Affairs Office, WMO
Ms Carine Richard-Van Maele, Chief, Tel: +41 (0)22 730 83 15, E-mail: cpa at wmo.int,
Ms Gaëlle Sévenier, Press Officer, Tel: +41 (0) 22 730 84 17, E-mail: gsevenier at wmo.int
Internet website: http://www.wmo.int
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 23rd, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2010/02/b…
20 February 2010 – The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough ?
Posted by Big Gav in bloom energy, cogeneration, fuel cells.
CBS’s “Sixty Minutes” program has a look at cogeneration / fuel cell company Bloom Energy this weekend – The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough?.
For the past year and a half, several large California corporations have been secretly using the “Bloom Box,” a potentially revolutionary fuel-cell system. Confirming this for the first time, several of the companies report this system is a more efficient, clean, and cost effective way to get electricity than off the power grid. Lesley Stahl and 60 MINUTES cameras get the first look inside the secretive California company, just days before the Bloom Energy official launch, scheduled for this Wednesday (24). Stahl’s report will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES, Sunday Feb. 21 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
John Donahoe, CEO of E-bay, confirms Bloom Boxes were installed at his corporate campus nine months ago. The company says the boxes already saved them over $100,000 in electricity bills. “It’s been very successful thus far. [The Bloom Boxes] have done what they said they would do,” says Donahoe. The five boxes are able to produce five times as much electricity as the 3,248 solar panels that E-bay installed on its campus roofs, says the CEO. “The footprint for Bloom is much more efficient,” he tells Stahl. Google, FedEx, Staples and Wal-Mart are among the first 20clients Bloom is confirming.
Stahl is the first journalist to be allowed into the Bloom Energy lab and factory where they currently make one box a day. The boxes create electricity by a chemical process that utilizes oxygen and fuel, but involves no combustion. Bloom’s founder and CEO, K.R. Sridhar, insists all the materials in the box are cheap and available in abundance. Bloom says each large Box – which can power about 100 homes – currently sells for $700-800,000. They hope within five to 10 years to roll out a smaller home version for about $3,000 a unit.
Bloom Energy was the first clean energy start-up Kleiner-Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, invested in. They currently invest in about 50 clean tech companies. Sridhar confirms the company has received over $400 million, making it one of the most expensive startups in history. The majority of that comes from Kleiner Perkins. John Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins partner who invested in Bloom, has high hopes. “The Bloom Box is intended to replace the [electric power] grid for its customer,” says Doerr. He thinks existing utility companies should not be threatened or have a problem with Bloom Energy. “The utility companies will see this as a solution. All they need to do is buy Bloom Boxes, put them in the substation for the neighborhood and sell that electricity,” he says.
But there is another hurdle says Michael Kanellos, editor in chief of the Web site GreenTech Media. Even if Sridhar can mass produce his boxes and sell them cheaply enough, “The problem is then G.E. and Siemens and other conglomerates that can probably do the same thing. They have fuel cell patents,” he tells Stahl.
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Posted in California, Real World's News
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 21st, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)
The Bloom Box: An Energy Breakthrough?
60 Minutes: First Customers Says Energy Machine Works And Saves Money.
CBS NEWS
CREATED: 02/18/2010 05:03:11 PM PST
(CBS) For the past year and a half, several large California corporations have been secretly testing the “Bloom Box,” a potentially revolutionary fuel-cell system. Confirming this for the first time, several of the companies report this system is a more efficient, clean, and cost effective way to get electricity than off the power grid.
Lesley Stahl and “60 Minutes” cameras get the first look inside the secretive California company, just days before the Bloom Energy official launch, scheduled for next Wednesday (Feb. 24).
Stahl’s report will be broadcast this Sunday, Feb. 21, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
John Donahoe, CEO of E-bay, confirms Bloom Boxes were installed at his corporate campus nine months ago. The company says the boxes already saved them over $100,000 in electricity bills. “It’s been very successful thus far. [The Bloom Boxes] have done what they said they would do,” says Donahoe. The five boxes are able to produce five times as much electricity as the 3,248 solar panels that E-bay installed on its campus roofs, says the CEO. “The footprint for Bloom is much more efficient,” he tells Stahl.
Google, FedEx, Staples and Walmart are among the first 20 clients Bloom is confirming.
Stahl is the first journalist to be allowed into the Bloom Energy lab and factory where currently one box a day is built. The boxes create electricity by a chemical process that utilizes oxygen and fuel, but involves no combustion.
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Bloom’s founder and CEO, K.R. Sridhar, insists all the materials in the box are cheap and available in abundance. Bloom says each large box – which can power about 100 homes – currently sells for $700-800,000. They hope within five to 10 years to roll out a smaller home version for about $3,000 a unit.
Bloom Energy was the first clean energy start-up Kleiner-Perkins, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm, invested in. They currently invest in about 50 clean tech companies. Sridhar confirms the company has received over $400 million, making it one of the most expensive startups in history. The majority of that comes from Kleiner Perkins.
John Doerr, the Kleiner Perkins partner who invested in Bloom, has high hopes. “The Bloom Box is intended to replace the [electric power] grid for its customer,” says Doerr. He thinks existing utility companies should not be threatened or have a problem with Bloom Energy. “The utility companies will see this as a solution.All they need to do is buy Bloom Boxes, put them in the substation for the neighborhood and sell that electricity,” he says.
To contact the Newsroom, call 907-274-1111.
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Posted in California, Copenhagen COP15, Global Warming issues, Green is Possible, Policy Lessons from Mad Cow Disease, Real World's News, Reporting from Washington DC, The US States
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